Liked them a lot, Penny... Bulldog already has a Lounge though, I think... Not sure about 200,000 as it could be quickly out of date (either way!), but FiveWays is probably a well-known name in a number of towns and cities... Certainly there's one down in Brighton

Given your explanation and that line drawing, my vote would go on Apex... educational as well as short!

(Incidentally, a friend lived in a property called 'Apexia' some years ago... probably the architect's choice to name it that.)

We know the forum mods will be running the forums, but who will run the portal and the other bits in it, Plusnet staff or the community?Who will decide what goes into the finished portal, Plusnet staff or the community?Obviously you are going for a fixed width content section so that you can control the layout design better than a liquid style, what width are you using 1024 or 800? I hope 1024.

If anything is fixed width it will need to cater for 800px. Believe it or not 800x600 still accounts for a massive proportion (if not most) of the traffic on the internet so it's imperative that design is still based around those with these limitations.

What we're thinking about (as a phase 2) is the ability to select from different stylesheets and that may give us the option to allow custom styles based on your preferences. That's not for the initial phase, though.

With regards to news / blogs and content. Initially we will be pushing content to the site, publishing blogs / news etc... In the future though we want to allow customers to setup their own blogs, linked to from their forum profiles etc.. etc.. and have the community drive a large proportion of the content. Eventually the Website Wizard will be replaced and there will be a "build my website" tool (or similar) right here.

So, we want to start off small and grow it... and expand on it. It's likely going to be based on a Drupal implementation so it should be fairly easy to add stuff in as and when required.

So:Who will manage the portal and the other bits in it? Answer: Plusnet (but might allow some community input later).Who will decide what goes into the finished portal design? Answer: PlusnetWho decided on the choice of names? Plusnet

I initially suggested that we should be giving our customers feedback into choosing the name of the site and fully appreciate that there appears to be a limited level of flexibility in the current voting process.

Please do bear in mind that this was done with the best intentions in mind, and I fully appreciate that there are a number of extra opinions on what the name could be. I personally don't like Apex and I think a lot of people will be confused over why exactly we would use a name like that, I'd be one of them!

Well, I'm sure we can add 'apex' to the list for voting, and if the feeling is strong enough this need not be an issue - a name ain't exactly a big deal on a technical level to change / rethink at any time if that is what the demand is for us to do. No one at PlusNet is precious over their ideas or the overall direction, provided the right thing is happening and customers are happy. It's always helpful to us to be told how we can improve things!

One thing I'd like to say is that everything in this part of the project relates to a community support site, not a community site as such - That will come later and is something quite different (Although one may feed the other). The community site will have a different URL altogether, and among other things will probably do the job that we hoped usertools would when it was launched... That's for a later discussion though. This community support site will be the place for discussion about PlusNet specifically, and the priority is being driven mainly be the need for us to solve a number of pressing problems we have with the current discussion forum implementation, as well as the need for a better mechanism to distribute detailed news and information among our referring customer base and the more enthusiastic members of the PlusNet customers and beyond. This will be a site that technically works a bit like the PUG one, in that it is totally separate from the PlusNet core codebase and customer database, but part of the ISP domain - That is set up most easily to be "http://name.plus.net, "http://name.force9.net" etc and so a name that forms part of the URL is a bit of a neccessity really.

Apex makes sense (Although I assosiate Apex with a train ticket automatically!), but isn't it going to be confused by many who just see reference to the link (for example in a posted URL to an article on the community support site)? http://discuss.plus.net describes simply what the site is for, and that is why it appealed to me.

Lets not get hung up too much over a name anyway. As I say, there is an urgent need to do something, and after that development can continue. It will be much more easily driven by the community using the very tools we are looking at just getting up and running in the first place...

I initially suggested that we should be giving our customers feedback into choosing the name of the site and fully appreciate that there appears to be a limited level of flexibility in the current voting process.Please do bear in mind that this was done with the best intentions in mind ...

Understand where you're coming from James, and actually not trying to make waves just that bringing all the forums together in one place (and IMHO the PUG forums shd be included in or alongside that somehow) is a huge (and long-awaited) step for PlusNet and a name that's a bit "different" would perhaps be appropriate.

You might see those below as a bit "off the wall" - but then "life" on the Zoomerang list is equally a bit of an unusual option.

[size=0](just as an aside: I was interested to discover the following definition for "Bailey" in the English Heritage Thesaurus just now: "Defences or an external wall surrounding a castle's motte or keep. Also a castle's outer court, or a court within a castle's walls.")[/size]

Regards,

Penny.

Footnote - just (pre uploading this) seen Ian's post, with the bit about

Quote

a community support site, not a community site as such - That will come later and is something quite different (Although one may feed the other). The community site will have a different URL altogether

and it does strike me that for customers to become aware of all the different aspects, there still needs to be a "grouping" name where all these "places to talk" are found - otherwise with disparate housings, the "community site" and "PUG" are likely to remain largely as invisible as the latter is now, to the userbase at large.

Don't mind what's decided just my take on the overall situation. I think perhaps I should disappear again now